Kicking & Screaming

Robin Clifford

Laura Clifford

When Phil Weston (Will Ferrell) learns that his soccer coach father,
Buck (Robert Duvall), has not only made his son Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) a
permanent benchwarmer, he even traded him to the worst team in the league,
he becomes infuriated. To get back at his always-competitive dad, Phil volunteers
to coach Sam’s new team, the Tigers, and will bring them to the finals even
if they do it “Kicking & Screaming.”

Robin:
Seeing director Jesse Dylan’s attempt, and there have been so very many,
to remake the classic “The Bad News Bears” has made me long to see, again,
that Walter Matthew rags to riches comedy about a bunch of foul mouthed Little
League losers and their boozing, Tiparillo-smoking coach. The 1976 film pulled
no punches and was amazingly politically incorrect when society was beginning
to go the PC route.

Dylan, whose previous attempt at comedy was the sometimes-amusing sequel,
“American Wedding,” takes the talented Will Ferrell and the cliché-driven
script by Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick and gives us the umpteenth remake
of “The Bad News Bears.”

Phil Weston is a nice and kind man who doesn’t want to make waves, especially
if it involves his domineering father. But, when Sam’s team, the Gladiators,
wins yet again, it is without the boy who has been benched for the season
by his own grandfather, Buck. It’s enough, the coach believes, that the boy
be happy to be a part of a winning team – a team led by Buck’s own, late-in-life
son, Bucky (Josh Hutcherson). Insult is added to injury when Sam is traded
to the Tigers.

Of course, when Phil arrives for his first coaching session he is confronted
with a group of misfit (mostly nondescript) players who could not win a game
if they played against themselves. The Tiger’s first outing on the field
is against the Gladiators who soundly trounce their ill-prepared opponents.
That’s when Phil plays his trump card and convinces Buck’s neighbor, football
legend Mike Ditka, to be his assistant coach. Ditka, always looking for a
way to get under Buck’s skin, agrees and brings with him a pair of Italian
soccer progenies, Masimmo (Alessandro Ruggiero) and Gian Piero (Francesco
Liotti). Suddenly, the Tigers are winning games.

Normally mild-mannered Phil falls into the trap of competitive kid sports
and loses track that the boys are there to have fun whether they win or lose.
It’s just win, win, win to Phil and he doesn’t care for anything but victory.
You can pretty much guess what happens when the Tigers make it to the playoffs
and the expected politically correct messages are marched out.

Will Ferrell broke out of his former comedy character actor roles with the
phenomenally successful “Elf.” Expectations ran high, and were disappointed,
with the lackluster and silly “Anchor Man.” (I won’t bother to mention his
Woody Allen impersonation in “Melinda and Melinda.”) In the PG-rated “Kicking
& Screaming,” Ferrell is relegated to move between milquetoast and soccer
fanatic but without the edge a more interesting PG-13 would have afforded
the comic actor. It doesn’t help that Ferrell must carry the film by himself,
ham-strung as he is by the simple-minded screenplay that does nothing to
capitalize on supporting actors and personalities like Duvall and Ditka.

The Tigers, as expected, are made up of a multi-sized, multi-raced, multi-ethnic
group of kids who sorely lack the skills needed to play the game of soccer.
The only one given any shrift or personality is Elliot Cho as the cutely
diminutive, lesbian-parented Byong Sun – whose name is butchered by Ditka
one too many times. The rest of the kids are there to fill space and not
much more. The same goes for the equally nondescript soccer parents. Only
Kate Walsh, as Phil’s wife Barbara, is able to put any dimension into her
character.

Techs are straightforward and without exception.

I should have watched my copy of “The Bad News Bears.” If anyone tries to
get you to go to “Kicking & Screaming,” do just that. I give it a D+.